March 15, 2007

THE N+1 LETTERS #2

From Keith Gessen, August 26, 2004 (Still not hating blogs.)

Hey, Mark.

Fair enough--please take your time with it.

The Intellectual Situation was written collectively. Especially the more offensive parts. We'd have done the whole magazine unsigned, but I think people might have found that weird. We really wanted to have a section in there that was from all of us, saying things we all believed to be true.

Which goes some way, maybe, toward answering the question of us writing so much of the thing. It's just a different model of magazine. As you say, Eliot's Criterion, where he published The Waste Land, or something like Partisan Review (those guys published their own poetry!), are places where the editors had things they wanted to say that they believed no one else was saying. Irving Howe's Dissent. Herzen's Bell. Dwight Macdonald's Politics. Sartre's Les Temps Modernes. The other model is curatorial: you're throwing a creative writing contest and whoever wins the contest gets published. That's the New American Review or the Paris Review--or the thousand magazines associated with MFA programs. They're both valid models, but obviously we're working in the first one.

On the other hand, once we've made it clear what we're doing and how we want it done, we'd like for other people to show up and do it for us so that we can lie back and watch the money roll in. That hasn't happened yet, though.

Comments

Don't get me wrong -- I enjoy your blog thoroughly and am on your side as far as this discussion goes.

But I don't like the vehicle you are using to make your point--isn't there a commonly agreed upon courtesy that emails are somewhat confidential and should therefore not be plastered all over a blog. Or does that not apply anymore?

Poomina, let me take a stab at your comment and explain my view on this, understanding that reasonable people may disagree.

First, in general, I believe you email bloggers essentially at your own risk. We're public figures with public sites, and if you write in to us, good sense suggests that there's a likelihood it might see the light of day. (I know I personally treat any email I send with the presumption that it will be shared; I'm not paranoid or mistrustful, just realistic.)

That said, you should know I receive confidential email ALL THE TIME. I am privvy to all sorts of things and those who know me well know I am actually quite discreet and can keep confidences. There is always something going on that I know about but don't write here.

Additionally, if someone uses cofidentiality language in their email footer or specifically asks in an email to keep it "off the record" or "between us," I always do so. (The one exception will be a future n+1 letter, for reasons that I think will be clear to all.)

Finally, even when there is no off the record request, as a matter of policy I always write back and ask the writer's permission before posting anything here.

So why is n+1 different?

A few reasons but primarily because they have also set themselves up as public figures - have courted that, in fact. And they have taken a clear stance on blogs that, I think, requires a corrective, which comes most effectively in their own words. They have also accused bloggers of "precarious self-respect," and, again, their own words most effectively show that they are, in fact, talking about themselves.

Believe me, I've sat on these for a long time with little intention of running them here. But this is a case where, given the actions of the editors both in the pages of their magazine and around the blogosphere in comments sections, I feel completely justified running these letters.

But, as I said at the outset, reasonable minds may difer. I hope, if these letters aren't to your taste, that you'll skip over them and continue to read the rest of TEV.

as funny as the comparison between the doris lessing and kunkel story is this is still unfair and unnecessary and hurtful and cruel. its also pornography. i dont know what kind. player-hating on lit-magazine pornography? but its pornography nevertheless because its unnecessary and contributes nothing to the discussion. why not write it on the back of your hand and then vogue? its not so elegant. as a "public figure" you should be more sensitive to that.

maybe if you get enough negative comments youll stop doing it and we can go back to reading how cool george saunders or paul auster is, or something at least easier to digest like how cool george saunders or paul auster is.

Mark--I never, ever try to tell people I read how to run their websites, but as a long-time reader of and linker to yours (and as a subscriber to n + 1, if that matters), I'm going to respectfully suggest that Gessen has a point in his comments at The Millions: If you're going to post n + 1's emails to you, perhaps you should also post the relevant emails you've written to them.

Murray, I do plan to. But my approach to n+1 has been reasonably consistent over time and the point here is to show that they've publicly said one thing while privately saying another. But you'll be seeing my half of the letters, too.

i have to say i've been a fan of this blog for a long time. as a publishing professional, it is the only one i read. but you are really demeaning yourself here, making yourself look petty. it's bad for your credibility, and bad for the blog. clearly gessen has struck a nerve with the litblogging community, whose insecurity was not so clear until now.

"ALC" I appreciate the comment; I realize this particular feature might not be to everyone's taste but I am determined that Gessen's hypocrisy should be aired. I'll take my lumps. That said, it's a bit of a tautology, isn't it? Someone accuses you of something and you can't step in and defend yourself without somehow confirming that? All I'm looking to do is to show Gessen's inconsistencies. As the lawyers say, it goes to credibility.

I'm interested in seeing where this is going and so here is a positive comment on the situation.

However, I really do think you need to post your own emails. Both for ethical reasons and also just to make their emails clear. Why is he writing you about the Intellectual Situation? What did you say to him about it?

I agree with Lincoln. While all this is entertaining, I can't condone posting private email publicly like this. If you're going to go down this shaky road, Mark, you should at least print your side of the conversation.

While I agree in general that posting private emails is questionable, let's recognize that this whole "battle" is a rather leisured and (compared to other battles) good humored one. It's clear that Mark is not releasing any damaging information, and I'm sure he knows what lines not to cross. I say no personal foul here, though it was close.

Keith Gessen's letter is, above all, informative. He makes an interesting distinction between two models of magazine; just as Gessen astutely calls the second model "curatorial," we might call the second model "assertive" or "declaratory." And he gives a brief history, in the form of examples, of the tradition n+1 is continuing.

What's more, his letter is courteous. He is, after all, responding at length to a question Mark Sarvas evidently asked him about his magazine.

It's even funny.

In short, I learned a lot by reading it. I can't say the same for the Elegant Variation.

If you'd have bothered to actually pay attention to the point of these posts, as opposed to showing up here with your mind made up, you'd have noted that this is precisely the point. That for someone who disdains blogs in general and this one in particular, Gessen & Co. were quite friendly when there was soemthing to be gained. And if you had some of Gessen's later, vicious emails in front you, you wouldn't think him so courteous. But it's clear given the sudden spike in columbia.edu email addresses around here that the call has gone out and the n+1 faithful are rallying ...

There are more than 4000 posts over three years here. You are welcome to make your decision based on one.

Keep posting 'em, Mark. These people are taking that pretentious N+1 way too seriously.

N+1 intrigued me for about five minutes, until it became clear that its editors are just hucksters, salesmen hawking a product that is not at all what they'd like to think it is.

N+1 is, frankly, banal, and its articles are the sort of thing I could write myself. By that, I mean that the tone and critical postures and insights that make up an N+1 are so preditable, so tired, so worn, that I could anticipate and write a whole damned issue myself, and be not far off the mark.

Oh yeah, what I meant by "huckster" and "salesman" is perfectly exposed in this bit by Gessen:

We sent you an n+1 about a month ago, and I just wanted to make sure you received it. You're not under any obligation to write about us, of course, except... well, except that you are. Of course. No such thing as a free n+1. I look forward to it.

This guy might as well be peddling carpet cleaner. What a dork. Did you receive the free sample I left by your door last week? Have you had a chance to use it?

Pardon me: I meant to say we might call the *first* model, the one n+1 is following, "assertive" or "declaratory."

Mark: I did, in fact, read all of the posts in this discussion, and what I found to be missing was any analysis of the letter itself. You are, it seems, hoping that this and other letters will support your claim that Gessen and n+1 once ingratiated you and other lit-bloggers, before adopting their anti-blog stance. But what I see in the above letter is not ingratiation but rather a civil explanation of an editorial approach and process. Sure, it's courteous, but it's not "courting."

As for the rest of your blog--well, I have a lot of other reading to do here at columbia.edu.

James: As Gessen pointed out, and Mark conceded (see "the n+1 letters #1A," part of which is reprinted below), n+1 did not send Mark the magazine *unsolicited*--that is, n+1 did not leave a sample by his door, as you suggested. Mark *asked* for one, though he has failed to post the email in which he, Mark, requested a copy of n+1.

"In our comments box, Keith Gessen has chided us for having had the temerity to ask to see a copy of the debut of n+1. He's right, we did and we neglected to run this response to the request. (Our inbox is a bit disorganized.)"

First of all, thank you to all the people who've gone on here to explain to Mark that this is not cool. I'm happy to let the emails speak for themselves, but Mark keeps alluding darkly to future emails, and his readers have no way of knowing that they don't actually exist.

The last post, about multiple "vicious emails," was simply a lie. Mark has exactly one (1) mean email from me, which I'll reproduce below. He also has an apologetic follow-up, which I'll also copy below. Mark has emails subsequent to those which are, once again, courteous, just as the emails reproduced thus far are courteous. This whole exercise is rather strange. Mark: I have always known your blog for what it is. But you have written me emails, and I have responded politely. You asked for an issue, I sent it. When you did not acknowledge receipt, I checked up. I contacted you first once and only once--after you'd written a dishonest thing on your site. Surely this is not assiduously courting. Anyway, if you ever get around to posting your own side of these emails, people will see that for themselves.

As for the mean email, it's below. What set it off was that Mark had spent a year writing us emails asking about the magazine (I answered), asking us to guest-blog on his site (I said no thanks), asking us to post an essay from issue 3 (I said no), and occasionally posting something to the effect of, There's a new issue out. Then Marco Roth, one of my co-editors, made an invidious comparison between Mark Sarvas and another blogger in a discussion about blogs at www.thevalve.org. It was not nice, but there it was. And suddenly, not long after, there was a post

http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/2005/12/why_we_love_tls.html

in which Mark approvingly quoted a TLS column comparing n+1 unfavorably to the mighty Norman Mailer on our engagement with important issues like the war in Iraq (we were supposedly engaged only with New York dating--partly true!); Mark also mocked Marco's great Derrida obituary for the n+1 website (www.nplusonemag.com/derrida.html); in a follow-up to the post, Mark made faces at a review Marco had written of a new Kafka biography in the New York Times (available on the Times site). Mark made no mention of the fact that Marco had criticized him on another blog. It just seemed like Mark Sarvas didn't like Marco Roth's book review in the Times. For some reason.

I found Mark's criticism of n+1 and Marco dishonest--quite aside from the Valve business, he at least knew, as the English writer he was quoting did not, that Issue 1 was very much devoted to the war in Iraq. I wrote:

Dear Mark---Man, you're really something else. Don't you know how easy it is 1) for people to see how good that Derrida essay is, and 2) for people to look up Marco saying he doesn't like your blog--and then, before that, you variously promoting n+1 without, it now appears, ever having read it? Except I remember sending you a copy of the first issue, because you asked for it, and you claiming to read it--so how is it you didn't notice everything we wrote about the war in that issue (the intro to the entire magazine; the piece on W.; the piece on Abu Ghraib; the piece on the New Republic's war-mongering; the longest essay in the issue, "Mogadishu, Baghdad, Troy"), or in the second issue (Scialabba on Hitchens, Phillips-Fein on Naomi Klein, Mark Greif on Agamben and 9/11, Alexander Kluge on international security), or in the third issue (Marco on torture, Klare on oil and American foreign policy, Deb on Rushdie's Kashmir).... no, that's really--it beggars description, doesn't it, the hypocrisy and inaccuracy of the thing. As for dating, sex, the war of the sexes, men and women---of course that's a major theme in Mailer. But one would have to have read Mailer to know that, wouldn't one, just as one would have to read n+1, or Indecision, to know about those things. So, like I say, happy new year, and keep up the important work you're doing. --Keith

--

There it is, the vicious email. Not nice, but well-deserved. Mark wrote back, indignant; he also hinted darkly on his blog that he had received "hate mail from the n+1 editorial staff" (me); I wrote again, in response to his email:

I just reread my initial email to you and boy is it mean. But I was
annoyed, and I'm still annoyed.

There are plenty of things to criticize about n+1--but "foolish,"
"trivial," and "moronic"? Come on. "Flavor of the month"? This isn't
dissent or criticism--and of course it's particularly annoying given
that it's just a reaction to Marco's having said something about you
in a blog discussion.

That's all I have to say about that. Also, just noticed your mention
of an email from the n+1 editorial staff. If you really intend to post
that, just please do it in its entirety, otherwise it's off the
record.

Keith

--

Er, that's it. Those are all the vicious emails in Mark's magic email vault. I'm sorry to have subjected you all to this, and I hope Mark can now go back to posting links to articles from British newspapers.

i enjoyed your nice, calm, sincere (in its attempt to 'solve' 'problems,' rather than just wanting to prove someone else is a terrible person) comment made of up factual observations and concrete specifics, keith, thank you

mark, assuming that it's a fact that keith 'hates' blogs now, whereas he didn't before... do you want to prove that keith is a terrible person because he 'changed?'

it seems like you just want to murder keith or something, i really don't understand; maybe you're trying to publically embarrass keith so that people in the future are more afraid of 'changing' their 'views'

is that it?

it seems like you're trying to discourage people from 'changing,' like people who talked shit about john kerry for being a 'flip flop'

James comes off as very whiny ("Why, I could do that myself!") and foolish (the sarcasm of "no such thing as a free n+1" didn't register?). It borders on the flippant to call the editors of n+1 "hucksters" -- I sincerely doubt they have made more than two dimes to rub together. And really, calling someone a dork reflects more poorly on you and your intellect than it does on the supposed dorks...

I'm afraid that Mark, for whom once I had respect, has come off a bit whiny and foolish as well. This has been a rather pathetic and revealing exchange.

I've already begun a fairly lengthy post on all of this which was to include a retraction of some aspects of this donnybrook and amplification of others. You'll have to take my word that it was begun late yesterday, before Keith's latest, but it was.

I still intend to complete it and post it on Monday. I'd also planned to offer it to Gessen and his team prior to posting to give them the opportunity to comment and correct, and to reply unedited, if wanted. I still intend to do this. Until then, I would ask Gessen to stop throwing the word "liar" around, or at least confront his own catalog of half-truths and omissions noted at the Millions, and to acknowledge that n+1 is not quite as generous in providing its detractors space as I have been here.

All I'll say about the post is that it includes a discussion of the concept of Post hoc, ergo propter hoc, and would have been an attemnpt to return this discussion to a more constructive vein. As I said, that was prior to Keith's latest post and so it's probably too late for that now, I think, but I hate to waste the effort and there's still much in the post worth discussing. So, with that, I will absent myself from more back and forth comments here on this until a revised version of the post is completed.

One last point - Keith, your chronology continues to omit. Yes, I did offer you a guest blog opportunity; yes you declined it - with a suggestion that I interview Marco instead! You also wrote to me to thank me for linking to your McEwan review and you wrote to me to thank me for asking people contribute to n+1 after your party funds had been stolen - a post I put after my supposed newfound loathing for you. So, please, if you'd like to play the pre-empt game, that's your right but if honest and full disclosure is your tactic, then really be honest. Otherwise, your calling me a liar counts for little. And I'm quite fond of British newspapers ...

Mark, do yourself a favor. Don't post on Monday. Don't comment again. Let the thing die. It doesn't look good and I don't have faith that you can help yourself. In the future, run your ideas by someone with common sense. It'll keep your foot out of your mouth, where it frequently seems to be found.

I'm serious about having faith. And, for what it's worth, you'll find a concerted absence of mean-spiritedness in my post. (You're quite right, I can shoot my mouth off.) So, in a way, I have taken your advice.

Good lord, these N+1 minions are thin-skinned. The "huckster" thing I said in my last post seems to have really struck a nerve.

You people need to, uh, get a life.

Oh, and by the way, all you N+1 groupies, part of the "huckster" thing is that N+1 really defiles itself with its stupid Myspace page and its attempt to McSweenify itself by going on tour, etc. Lame. You're just a fucking magazine, but like every other huckster out there, you can't be content to be just a magazine, you have to try to be a lifestyle.

Oh, and when all you N+1 folks thought you had just arrived, in truth you had already become a joke.

I mean, seriously, me suggesting to a literary friend that they read N+1 would not be taken seriously.

Next time, try not to get so "hot" so fast. Just try to do a good job, not "brand" yourself, etc. You've made jokes of yourself by posing for photo spreads, having these stupid parties that you brag about having "overflow" into the Paris Review offices, putzing with your Myspace page, etc. You're trying to be hot and successful on Internet time, and chic and happening on Vanity Fair time, while at the same time issuing lordly pronouncements about the state of literature and such, and the disparity between your appetite for attention and your moralistic posturing has exposed you as the bunch of silly fools that you are.

What kind of wretch would actually buy an N+1 totebag? What kind of pathetic, hipster herd mentality would that betoken? Damn, that's sad.

Whatever you may say about The Elegant Variation or other litblogs, at least you cannot say this of them: "They are selling totebags with their logo on them." Unfortunately, N+1, this can be said about you.

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but this whole spat smells of some kind of mutual promotion pact to me. If so, it's worked-- my interest's been piqued enough to check TEV regularly instead of occasionally, and I've been reminded of n+1's existence, which I'd forgotten after I read the second issue. (That's not meant as a slam; the issue didn't do much for me, but it seemed likely to me that I just wasn't intelligent and/or educated enough to appreciate it.) But in the interest of honesty: are you guys in cahoots, or is the attention generated from this just a lucky accident?

James, you're getting caught up in the stuff that surrounds n+1. That's not the attitude of someone that cares about writing. That's the attitude of jaded passivity that every dude with a stilted attitude that he learned from TV brings toward everything and everybody who tries to do something in the world. It's the attitude of people who read celebrity magazines in order to seethe at people, and it's not one that you should be proud. And, of course, you surely are not proud -- as your fake email discloses.

n+1 is a magazine that takes hundreds of hours of work to put together. It ought to be judged on those grounds and those grounds alone. All the other stuff you're getting so hysterical about is meaningless. The New York Times Magazine wrote an article about n+1 and the Believer with a big portrait of Heidi Julavits and another glamor shot of Vendela Vida, and then a small, skronky looking shot of the founding editors of n+1 in Keith Gessen's Crown Height apartment. That's what magazines do -- they illustrate text with photographs. As for the parties -- hundreds of sociable, intelligent, and attractive people doing interesting things have gotten together and had a good time in each other's company on several occasions. Usually the drinks were $1 a bottle. What's "stupid" about that? No, really, James, why is that stupid?

n+1 is not for everyone, and that's fine. The people that are its intended audience get it. Others don't have to, but they shouldn't mistake their own incomprehension for a meaningful criticism. One person that likes n+1 a lot is David Remnick. He's already snapped up three of their writers to write for his magazine.

Now, far be it from me to make an argument from authority. It should not be decisive to anyone that a guy like Remnick would see the value in n+1. But, here's the thing -- Remnick has a record that you can look at -- a record as a writer and an editor -- just as EdRants also has a record and TEV also has a record. And if you go by the record of Remnick's works and his judgments and you compare them to the record of EdRants and TEV's works and judgments, and, considering the wide disparity in their views, and forced to choose between them -- it's hard for a fair minded person not to go with Remnick. Indeed, given that choice -- which is in fact the choice that is given us by fate and circumstance -- who could possibly side with you, James?

That's not to say that we should be slavishly deferential to the New Yorker, as almost everyone in any way connected to the writing world seems to be these days (for good reason, as its the only venue that pays well for good pieces) -- it has plenty of problems. But it's also a reliable source of interesting things to read, in a way that few other magazines are. Anybody that cares about writing knows this. n+1 is also, in its own way, a reliable source of interesting things to read. Every issue has been worth reading. It courts controversy, it can be too clever by half, it can be glib and supercilious, but it's always well-written and highly controlled. It's not something that can be easily dismissed by anyone that cares about writing. It can, however, be easily dismissed by people who seethe with a resentment that they little understand and that is constantly seeking targets upon which to thrust itself. Such people need to get lives.

Agree with the bulk of that last comment from "W" or not, it certainly makes one feel less tainted for participating in this discussion than certain previous entries have. That is to say, why are the intelligent, literate, passionate-about-literature people on either side of this fracas fighting, really? And whose 'side' are the dumber comments really supporting?

My criticism is simple: your efforts to court fame and attention and become luminaries is rather unliterary, because your product has, so far, been unworthy of the worldwide attention you have so eagerly sought. You need to focus on becoming worthy of fame and attention, and then start posing for photo spreads. You guys are the irritating sort who have just taken a handful of literature and philosophy classes but foolishly think this equips you to become famous cultural critics. Your plotting of your rise to eminence is too transparent and you've become laughable.

We can almost hear you ticking off the list in your head: "Okay, we've got Indecision, which is kind of like our AHWOSG; we're having big literary parties, which makes us kind of like the Paris Review; and we are contentious and political and angry, which makes us kind of like The Partisan Review.

The articles you have trumpeted as your best work are just foolish. The obituary about Jacques Derrida that is packed with self-congratulatory asides ("he noticed that I didn't have an American accent! That makes me so cool!" ... "my mother's Left Bank friends ... how bohemian my pedigree is!"). That stupid, stupid article about Badiou that you're still trying to live down. (You guys are all so indignant that you are being unfairly criticized, but you sure didn't hesitate to publish that foolish article unfairly maligning someone else, did you?)

Sorry, you guys are taking this all too seriously. You take yourselves too seriously and you take these criticisms of you too seriously. You can, as they say, "dish it out but you can't take it." Why do you care so much?

A handful of literature and philosophy classes? As several people in the media have been eager to point out (and make faces at), all of the editors did BAs at either Harvard or Columbia, and two went on to do PhDs at Yale. To say they've taken a handful of literature and philosophy classes is blatantly false.

The articles you cite as the ones n+1 has "trumpeted" are all web-only articles. You apparently laughed off the magazine before ever opening its pages. The cultural criticism in the print issues is incisive--much more probing than, for instance, your observation that a magazine is "plotting [its] rise to eminence"--and I'd be happy, as an n+1 reader, to give examples if you're interested. After reading a handful of articles on the magazine's website (and only the controversial ones, at that), you are not very "equipped" to deride n+1's literary and cultural criticism, now, are you?

Nobody courted fame, and it's not "me" that did the not-courting. I know the n+1 people socially, but I've written a lot more that is critical(like actually critical rather than snidely dismissive in a juvenile way) of them than is positive about them. The Times Magazine piece was not a bid for stardom, and the photograph was a requirement of the magazine grudgingly agreed to. I know as much about what there is to love or hate about the magazine as there is to know.

There's some of both, and trust me, you've created a monster in your head that's animated entirely by your fears and self-contempt and your resentment at a world -- that really ought to be resented, it's a terrible, corrupt place -- but it has nothing to do with n+1. It's a debatable question whether n+1 was "ready" or "good enough" to be featured in a major magazine when they were -- it was just the beginning, after all -- but nobody starting a magazine is going to turn down the opportunity, and the Scott piece turned out to be an intelligent one on larger issues, not just a shill piece for n+1.

It's a matter of injustice that the New York media never paid any attention to Hermenaut or the Baffler, two small predecessor magazines that carried out the mission of the small magazines very well -- keeping alive a critical spark for writers at a time when everybody was carried away with the false euphoria of the Clinton years. And it's a matter of injustice that the reason the media paid some fleeting attention to n+1 and never paid any to Hermenaut is that Hermenaut also threw big parties in the late 90's -- but those all happened in Boston, while n+1 happens to be in New York, where tastes are made. Hermenaut was more innovative qua magazine than n+1 is -- A Public Space, for instance, basically ripped of their design wholesale -- they drew from a wider cross-section of zine and alternative culture to create something that was generationally specific in a way that n+1 doesn't try to do. Bu then there are the kinds of people who sought out Hermenaut and the Baffler when they existed, and who would have sought out n+1 whether or not it was written up in the Times. I guarantee that the people, like you, who get hysterical about the fact that n+1 was in the Times, and that they sell totebags -- are the people who wouldn't. They just wait for things to appear in the Times and then shit on them.

So. That's all too bad, and lamentable, but then, people in every field of creative endeavor pay a steep premium to live in New York City and sometimes, if they are lucky, and if they are good, they reap the benefits. If n+1 hadn't published things as good as Babel in California, and if it weren't consistently stocked with things that draw you in and keep you engrossed all the way through, no one would care. That's not the same thing as being the Holy Grail or the same thing as being the instrument that delivers our intellectual future to us, but it's pretty darn good.

There's an obvious disconnect between the lofty aspirations of the magazine and the sometimes hit or miss reality of its web content, and the rather threadbare conditions in which it is produced -- but the people who hate the magazine -- admit it -- don't really hate it for its failures to attain its aspirations; they hate it for the aspiration itself. They are far more comfortable with Gawker, that characteristic generational expression, taking that comfortable attitude of japing passivity at everything and everyone, and using its own voluble self-contempt as a fig leaf for its own affected disaffection. It does not matter whether you hate Gawker itself or not, you have imbibed its spirit, as everybody in this generation has. You live that spirit when you go on comments sections to write stupid drivel slamming n+1.

Look, the Age of Revolution, beginning with the 18th century Englihtenment philosophes, began as a conspiracy from coffeehouses run by a handful of intellectuals plotting a vision of a new world. It's had extremely ambiguous consequences, but the world they helped to make is the world we live today.

To be an old-style literary intellectual in age of specialization is inevitably to be a kind of laughable anachronism left behind by the very history those conspirators had set in motion. Today's activist intellectuals -- the ones who actually change the world -- are the theorists of jihad and the neo-conservatives, And the makers of our future are all working for pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, or they working with the technology transfer departments of their universities to patent their findings and launch their own startups. This privatized world of knowledge has more need of public intellectuals, not less, and yet it's only the conservatives who fund theirs.

Does n+1 have an answer to the conundrum that history presents us with? Not that I've seen in anything of the work they've done; but then, nobody else seems to have this answer either. In the meantime, it's a good magazine that you can sit down and read cover to cover and then go back later to read some of the better articles over again, and feel rewarded for having done so. That is just true; try it sometime. If you were honest -- and of course you are not -- you would admit it.

It's true that the people who respond to comment sections respond, for the most part, out of narcissism. That is, of course, the main reason that writers visit the sites in the first place. No one else responds in real time to the work of book reviewers or journalists. So we go to the blogs to see if they're writing about us. If we're not careful, we too can get sucked into the flame wars that take place in the comments sections, because writers are as subject to their worst impulses as anyone else, and because the typing that goes on in comments sections so closely resembles the writing they do for a living.

Like all bullies and provocateurs, you stir people with inflammatory rhetoric, and when they respond, you then ask them "why do you care so much?" as if your criticism was so cutting that we must be maddened with rage. But criticism can be enraging for two reasons. It can be enraging because it cuts some to the quick, as yours does not -- how could it? ungrammatical, insult-laden hash that it is. It can also be enraging because it epitomizes all the worst tendencies of all the worst people, as yours does. So, to answer your question, I care because I like n+1 quite a bit; but mostly because I really despise their detractors, and then some of their detractors are more shameless and despicable than others, and they can really set you off.

I've heard it all from every conceivable enemy of n+1, some of whom are extremely articulate -- vastly more so than you -- and some of whom are my good friends. None of them are obeying their better impulses when they assail n+1. They just aren't.

W. There is much in your post that is reasonable, true and well-argued. I would like to respectfully suggest, though, that you - and nearly all the other n+1 supporters commenting here - considering stepping out from behind your anonymity and sign your name. I think it would add even more weight to a persuasive post.

I agree in large part with w's post, but again, the problem is that you're conflating a litblog, which is an entirely different medium and DOESN'T have a fat budget, a team of writers and fact checkers, etc., and is run by one human being, with a magazine like the New Yorker that DOES have these things in place. Nor would I be foolish to even compare my site with the New Yorker. That's like comparing a small-town mayor with the House of Representatives. I think any blogger or blog reader is fully aware of a blog's limitations. This whole notion of blogs including 5,000 word essays in order to be "significant" misses the point of the medium. I thought these questions were settled back in 1999, when there were all those silly blogs vs. journalism wars. Apparently not.

This "discussion," whether here, the Valve, the Millions, or what not, has become utterly ridiculous, particularly when we're all guilty of judging individuals based on mere snippets of information. Even Keith Gessen averred in the Millions thread that it's all a matter of personal preference. That's fine. So some of you dig n+1. Some of you dig litblogs. Some of you dig both. Whatever gets you through the night, it's all right. It's all right.

It is even more preposterous to damn n+1 for its photo spreads and the like, when one should look directly to the magazine for its strengths and fallacies, not these ancillary press write-ups. This is why I posted that preposterous n+1 photo yesterday and apparently failed at revealing the irony of these discussions: that people simply aren't going beyond scratching the surface. I'd also like to say that I don't view Keith Gessen or anyone at n+1 as the devil incarnate. I think I'm simply going to recuse myself from any further comment on this to concentrate on more meaningful things -- like putting up podcasts containing thoughtful discussions with Martin Amis and the like. This simply isn't worth my time. And Mark, I think abandoning this issue altogether might be a good idea.

Feel free to let me know when you're all done with your dick wars. I've got more important things to do with my time.

I'm glad we agree on some things, and hopefully we can now end this thread on a reasonable note. The Intellectual Situation piece that started this whole thing was deliberately inflammatory and it was surely susceptible to many of the criticisms lodged against it. 5,000 word blog postings are not the answer. Blogs are what they are and they can be interesting for what they are, though it's legitimate for a critic to try to register some objections to the general trends he observes, which the reader is then in a position to either accept or reject. Still, it was a fun piece. Enough said.

The whole posting of Keith's email's thing was not a good idea, Mark -- I think you realize that by now -- and the various declarations to write n+1 off made by both of you were mostly motivated by the momentary spite that can take over any of us and that the instantaneousness of blog posting can (let's admit it) inspire in all of us. Part of the strange fascination of blogs is to see people undigested in real time, but a lot of that fascination is, as a previous writer pointed out, pornographic rather than literary. Pornography and literature can overlap, of course, and the overlap can sometimes be inadvertent, and there's a way of appreciating the blogosphere's pornographic vigor that is much like the appreciation we can have for COPS or the reality dating shows.

But another part of the blogs that is valuable is that people can something go into the comments section and work out their differences or at least define them with greater clarity, and sometimes discover they have been reduced, as I think we possibly have been able to do here. That's a virtue of blogs that the n+1 piece, and their overall stance on the blogs misses altogether. To the extent that blogs and the people who go their can foster do the latter instead of the former, they can be a force for good.

Let's close out this thread without false promises of glowing amity, but with at least a renewed sense of where the boundaries lie. Everybody got their shots in, everybody probably managed to make the other side look worse without making themselves look any better. What you do has your constituency, what n+1 has theirs, and there's a decently large overlap between those constituencies that won't go away.

But we all had a good time letting off steam in the privacy of our bedrooms. That's not the highest or best form of pleasure -- I'd rather be dancing with a beautiful woman in a room crowded with hundreds of other attractive, sociable people -- but it was good while it lasted. Let's move on.

It's funny that these types of public arguments often make all the participants feel somewhat exposed, as if we're all embarrassed to reveal how deeply we care about literature, about criticism, about "fame". Well, despite the fact that some who've posted here think everybody should shut up, in my opinion this has turned out to be a pretty invigorating debate (though certainly dumb in sections) and I think some of us may have even learned something.

As for me, I've thumbed through issues of N+1 in the past, but all this discussion inspired me to spend some significant time with the latest issue, and I've decided to write up my impressions on my own little blog as soon as I get a chance (hopefully in a day or two). I found at least one major piece in the new issue that I liked a lot, and at least one major piece that points to the shallowness (accompanied by great appearances of depth) that makes many readers of N+1 feel so frequently annoyed.

I'm looking forward to posting my findings, and I promise NOT to bring this whole litblog flame war into my review at all, just because I guess any sane person will consider that topic to have been beaten to death by now. But, even if this whole N+1/blog battle was a publicity stunt (as Liz from Kenyon Review suspects it was), I'm happy to play along and deliver what I hope will be a fair consideration of this magazine's weaknesses and strengths. So, if anybody out there still wants to talk about N+1 in a day or two, I'll hopefully have a fresh (and non-litblog-related) perspective to offer over at my place. Looking fwd to Mark's upcoming postings too. What's wrong with a little debate, people?!?!!!

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

RECOMMENDED

This slim volume by the president and founder of the Nexus Institute, a European-based humanist think-tank, stands as the most stirring redoubt against the ascendant forces of know-nothingness that we've come across in a long time. A full-throated, unapologetic defense of the virtues of Western Civ – in which "elite" is not and never should be a dirty word – this inspiring exploration of high art and high ideals is divided into three sections: The first looks at the life of Riemen's great hero Thomas Mann as a model for the examined life. The second imagines a series of conversations from turning points in European intellectual history, populated with the likes of Socrates, Nietzsche and others. The final section, "Be Brave," is nothing less than an exhortation to dig deep, especially in times of risk. The notion of nobility of the spirit might strike some modern ears as quaint but it seems more desperately necessary than ever before, and there are worse ways to read the accessible Nobility of Spirit than as a crash refresher in the Great Thinkers, free of academic jargon and cant. As a meditation on what is at stake when the pursuit of high ideals is elbowed aside by the pursuit of fleeting material gain, however, Nobility of Spirit might well be the most prescient book we've yet read on what's at stake in the current election cycle and in the developing global situation. Agree or disagree with Riemen's profound, ambitious and high-minded plea, you will be thinking about his words for a long time. It's been ages since a work of non-fiction moved us this way. Read it. Discuss it. Argue about it.

With rave reviews from James Wood, Michiko Kakutani and Dwight Garner, it might not seem like we need to tell you to drop everything and go read Netherland, but we are telling you, and here's why: The way book coverage works these days, everyone talks about the same book for about two or three weeks, and then they move on and the book is more or less forgotten. Whereas a berth here in the Recommended sidebar keeps noteworthy titles in view for a good, long time, which is the sort of sustained attention this marvelous novel deserves. A Gatsby-like meditation on exclusion and otherness, it's an unforgettable New York story in which the post 9/11 lives of Hans, a Dutch banker estranged from his English wife, and Chuck Ramkissoon, a mysterious cricket entrepreneur, intertwine. The New York City of the immigrant margins is unforgettably invoked in gorgeous, precise prose, and the novel's luminous conclusion is a radiant beacon illuminating one of our essential questions, the question of belonging. Our strongest possible recommendation.

"History," wrote Henry James in a 1910 letter to his amanuensis Theodora Bosanquet, "is strangely written." This casual aside could easily serve as the epigraph of Cynthia Ozick's superb new collection Dictation, which concerns itself with lost worlds evoked by languages -- languages which separate and obscure as readily as they bind. It can be risky to look for connective tissue between stories written years apart and published in magazines ranging from The Conradian to The New Yorker. But themes of deception, posterity, and above all, the glory of language -- at once malleable and intractable -- knit together this quartet, recasting the whole as the harmonious product of Ozick's formidable talent. Read the entire review here

Now, on the one hand, you scarcely need us to alert you to the existence of a new J.M. Coetzee novel, or even to have us tell you it's worth reading. But we can tell you - we insist on telling you that Diary of a Bad Year is a triumph, easily Coetzee's most affecting and fully wrought work since Disgrace. Formally inventive, the book intertwines two narratives with the author's own Strong Opinions, a series of seemingly discrete philosophical and political essays. The cumulative effect of this strange trio is deeply moving and thought provoking. It's increasingly rare in this thoroughly post-post-modern age to raise the kind of questions in fiction Coetzee handles so masterfully - right down to what is it, exactly, that we expect (or need) from our novels. It's telling that, for all of his serious pronouncements on subjects ranging from censorship to pedophilia to the use of torture, it's finally a few pages from The Brothers Karamazov that brings him to tears. Moving, wise and - how's this for a surprise - funny and lightly self-mocking, Diary of a Bad Year might well be the book of the year and Coetzee is surely our essential novelist. We haven't stopped thinking about it since we set it down.

David Leavitt's magnificent new novel tells the story of the unlikely friendship between the British mathematician G.H. Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan, mathematical autodidact and prodigy who had been working as a clerk in Madras, and who would turn out to be one of the great mathematical minds of the century. Ramanujan reluctantly joined Hardy in England - a move that would ultimately prove to his detriment - and the men set to work on proving the Riemann Hypothesis, one of mathematics' great unsolved problems. The Indian Clerk, an epic and elegant work which spans continents and decades, encompasses a World War, and boasts a cast of characters that includes Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Lytton Strachey. Leavitt renders the complex mathematics in a manner that resonates emotionally as well as intellectually, and writes with crystalline elegance. The metaphor of the prime number – divisible only by one and itself – is beautifully apt for this tale of these two isolated geniuses. Leavitt's control of this dense, sprawling material is impressive – astonishing, at times – and yet despite its scope, he keeps us focused on his great themes of unknowability and identity. The Indian Clerk might be set in the past but it doesn't resemble most so-called "historical fiction." Rather, it's an ageless meditation on the quests for knowledge and for the self – and how frequently the two are intertwined – that is, finally, as timeless as the music of the primes. (View our full week of coverage here.)

Joshua Ferris' warm and funny debut novel is an antidote to the sneering likes of The Office and Max Barry's Company. Treating his characters with both affection and respect, Ferris takes us into a Chicago ad agency at the onset of the dot-bomb. Careers are in jeopardy, nerves are frayed and petty turf wars are fought. But there are bigger stakes in the balance, and Ferris' weirdly indeterminate point of view that's mostly first person plural, underscores the shared humanity of everyone who has ever had to sit behind a desk. It's a luminous, affecting debut and you can read the first chapter right here.

Coming to these shores at last, John Banville's thriller, written under the nom de plume Benjamin Black, has drawn rave reviews across the pond since it first appeared last October. Those who feared Banville might turn in an overly literary effort needn't worry. Influenced by Simenon's romans durs (hard stories), Banville unspools a dark mystery set in 1950s Dublin concerning itself with, among other things, the church's trade in orphans. At the heart of the book is the coroner Quirke, a Banvillean creation on par with Alex Cleave and Freddie Montgomery. Dublin is rendered with a damp, creaky specificity – you can almost taste the whisky.

Scanning our Recommended selections, one might conclude we're addicted to interviews, and one would be correct. If author interviews are like crack to us, then the Paris Review author interviews must surely be the gold standard of crack (a comparison Plimpton might not have embraced). The newly issued The Paris Review Interviews, Volume I (Picador) rolls out the heavy hitters. Who can possibly turn away from the likes of Saul Bellow, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Jorge Luis Borges, Dorothy Parker, Robert Gottlieb and others? The interviews are formal and thoughtful but never dry and can replace any dozen "how-to" books on writing. What can be more comforting than hearing Bellow, answering a question on preparations and conception, admit "Well, I don't know exactly how it's done.” The best part of this collection? The "Volume I" in the title, with its promise of more volumes to come.

The best short story collection we've read since ... well, certainly since we've started this blog. And we might even say "ever" if Dubliners didn't cast such a long shadow. The short story is not our preferred form but D'Ambrosio's eight brilliant stories are almost enough to convert us. Defy the conventional wisdom that short story collections don't sell and treat yourself to this marvel. (We're especially partial, naturally, to "Screenwriter".)

What would you do if the woman who’d left you high and dry ten years ago called out of the blue to invite you to a party without any further explanation? If you’re French, you’d probably spend a lot of time pondering the Deeper Significance Of It All, which is exactly what Grégoire Bouillier does for the 120 hilarious pages of The Mystery Guest. This slim, witty memoir follows Bouillier through the party from hell, and is a case study in Gallic self-abasement. Before it’s all done, you’ll set fire to any turtleneck hanging in your closet and think twice before buying an expensive Bordeaux as a gift. But fear not – just when it seems that all is, indeed, random and pointless and there is no Deeper Significance, salvation arrives in the unlikely form of Virginia Woolf, and the tale ends on a note of unforced optimism. Parfait.

When George Ticknor's Life of William Hickling Prescott was published in 1864, it received rapturous notices, and reviewers were quick to point out that the long-standing friendship between Prescott and Ticknor made the latter an ideal Boswell. Sheila Heti has pulled this obscure leaf from the literary archives and fashioned a mordantly funny anti-history; a pungent and hilarious study of bitterness and promise unfulfilled. As a fretful Ticknor navigates his way through the rain-soaked streets of Boston to Prescott's house ("But I am not a late man. I hate to be late."), he recalls his decidedly one-sided lifelong friendship with his great subject. Unlike the real-life Ticknor, this one is an embittered also-ran, full of plans and intentions never realized, always alive to the fashionable whispers behind his back. Heti seamlessly inhabits Ticknor's fussy 19th-century diction with a feat of virtuoso ventriloquism that puts one in mind of The Remains of the Day. Heti's Ticknor would be insufferable if he weren't so funny, and in the end, the black humor brings a leavening poignancy to this brief tale. But don't let the size fool you — this 109-page first novel is small but scarcely slight; it is as dense and textured as a truffle.

No, your eyes aren't deceiving you and yes, we are recommending a Believer product. Twenty-three interviews (a third presented for the first time) pairing the likes of Zadie Smith with Ian McEwan, Jonathan Lethem with Paul Auster, Edward P. Jones and ZZ Packer, and Adam Thirwell with Tom Stoppard make this collection a must-read. Lifted out of the context of some of the magazine's worst twee excesses, the interviews stand admirably on their own as largely thoughtful dialogues on craft. A handful of interviewers seem more interested in themselves than in their subjects but in the main this collection will prove irresistible to writers of any stripe - struggling or established - and to readers seeking a window into the creative process.

John Banville's latest novel returns him to the Booker Prize shortlist for the first time since 1989's The Book of Evidence. In The Sea, we find Banville in transition, moving from the icy, restrained narrators of The Untouchable, Eclipse and Shroud toward warmer climes. Max Morden has returned to the vacation spot of his youth as he grieves the death of his wife. Remembering his first, fatal love, Morden works to reconcile himself to his loss. Banville's trademark linguistic virtuosity is everpresent but some of the chilly control is relinquished and Max mourns and rages in ways that mark a new direction for Banville - and there's at least one great twist which you'll never see coming. Given the politicized nature of the British literary scene, Banville's shot at the prize might be hobbled by his controversial McEwan review but we're rooting for our longtime favorite to go all the way at last. UPDATE: Our man won!

We've been fans of Booker Prize winner John Berger for ages, and we're delighted to have received an early copy of his latest work, Here is Where We Meet. In this lovely, elliptical, melancholy "fictional memoir," Berger traverses European cities from Libson to Geneva to Islington, conversing with shades from his past – He encounters his dead mother on a Lisbon tram, a beloved mentor in a Krakow market. Along the way, we're treated to marvelous and occasionally heart-rending glimpses of an extraordinary life, a lyrical elegy to the 20th century from a man who - in his eighth decade - remains committed to his political beliefs and almost childlike in his openness to people, places and experiences. There's no conventional narrative here, and those seeking plot are advised to look elsewhere. But Here is Where We Meet offers a wise, moving and poetic look at the life of an artist traversing the European century from a novelist whose talent remains undimmed in his twilight years.

In his recent TEV guest review of Home Land, Jim Ruland called Sam Lipsyte the "funniest writer of his generation," and we're quite inclined to agree. We tore through Home Land in two joyful sittings and can't remember the last time we've laughed so hard. Lipsyte's constellation of oddly sympathetic losers is rendered with a sparkling, inspired prose style that's sent us off in search of all his prior work. In Lewis Miner's (a.k.a Teabag) woeful epistolary dispatches to his high school alumni newsletter ("I did not pan out."), we find an anti-hero for the age. Highly, highly recommended.

SECOND LOOK

Penelope Fitzgerald's second novel is the tale of Florence Green, a widow who seeks, in the late 1950s, to bring a bookstore to an isolated British town, encountering all manner of obstacles, including incompetent builders, vindictive gentry, small minded bankers, an irritable poltergeist, but, above all, a town that might not, in fact, want a bookshop. Fitzgerald's prose is spare but evocative – there's no wasted effort and her work reminds one of Hemingway's dictum that every word should fight for its right to be on the page. Florence is an engaging creation, stubbornly committed to her plan even as uncertainty regarding the wisdom of the enterprise gnaws at her. But The Bookshop concerns itself, finally, with the astonishing vindictiveness of which provincials are capable, and, as so much English fiction must, it grapples with the inevitabilities of class. It's a dense marvel at 123 pages, a book you won't want to – or be able to – rush through.

Tim Krabbé's superb 1978 memoir-cum-novel is the single best book we've read about cycling, a book that will come closer to bringing you inside a grueling road race than anything else out there. A kilometer-by-kilometer look at just what is required to endure some of the most grueling terrain in the world, Krabbé explains the tactics, the choices and – above all – the grinding, endless, excruciating pain that every cyclist faces and makes it heart-pounding rather than expository or tedious. No writer has better captured both the agony and the determination to ride through the agony. He's an elegant stylist (ably served by Sam Garrett's fine translation) and The Rider manages to be that rarest hybrid – an authentic, accurate book about cycling that's a pleasure to read. "Non-racers," he writes. "The emptiness of those lives shocks me."